


These Flowers I Stole For You, Left By Your Graves

by phosphorous



Series: Haikyuu One-shot Collection | Multiple Universes [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: ANBU Captain!Oikawa Tooru, ANBU Squad!Seijoh Third Years, Alternate Universe - Naruto Timeline, Angst, Ex-ANBU Operative!Iwaizumi Hajime, Gen, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Mentions of Gratuitous Violence, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22052761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phosphorous/pseuds/phosphorous
Summary: ANBU don't cry. They tear themselves apart, bit by bit, and then they stitch themselves whole again.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime & Matsukawa Issei & Hanamaki Takahiro & Oikawa Tooru, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Series: Haikyuu One-shot Collection | Multiple Universes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579000
Comments: 8
Kudos: 66





	These Flowers I Stole For You, Left By Your Graves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jinnieshyun (angelsouls)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelsouls/gifts).



**01**

Hanamaki and Matsukawa die hand in hand. 

Tooru opens his eyes to the sight of their bodies curled up together in a splatter of thick, rapidly clotting blood. Hanamaki’s armor is completely gone, and he rests in black clothes that cling onto him like a second skin. Matsukawa’s armor is still intact, but the plate that covers his arms are broken, and the wounds that show on his neck are nothing short of horrendous. In between their bodies, where the grass is stained crimson, their hands are linked, dead fingers intertwined like roots of an aged tree.

_Until death do us apart,_ Matsukawa always said. He didn’t smile often as a chunin, raised to be standoffish and aloof as the heir to one of the most powerful clans in the village, but when he did, it was always brilliant, like looking into the edge of a sharpened kunai in the dark. 

_I’m too stubborn to die,_ Hanamaki always responded. No one was immortal and death was inevitable when one was as high-ranking as them in the Corps, but he made it sound believable. Contrary to what the statement implied, he didn’t want to live until the end of time. He just wanted to stay with Matsukawa, end of time be damned.

Beyond them, far away into the trees, Iwa-chan is bleeding onto the cluster of dead leaves, Hanamaki’s tanto clutched onto his chest as it rises slowly and shallowly. He’s still alive, but he’s unconscious.

Mechanically, Tooru uses the blood on the tip of his finger to write a scroll and send it off with one of his summons. He tries to ignore how the blood on his face drips onto the paper as he clumsily writes the code, and hopes that whoever receives the note doesn’t notice the splatter of diluted red on the side of the paper. ANBU don’t show emotion, even when one of their teammates is bleeding out and unconscious and their other two of their teammates are lying dead in a pool of their own blood, dead fingers threaded together, a moment caught in between the red of the blood surrounding them and the golden sunlight that spills through the shrouded canopy of leaves above their heads.

ANBU don’t cry. They’re machines of war bred from resentment and hate, quelled into tools at the hands of the village. The assassinations, the lying, the deception, the stealing, the kidnapping, the torture — it’s not honorable work. It’s the ugliest parts of being shinobi that the rest of the village wouldn’t even dream of, let alone wish on their worst enemy. 

ANBU don’t cry. If Hanamaki and Matsukawa could see him now, they’d laugh at him, and ask if he was still Tooru from the academy who cried because he got pushed around by the big, bad kids.

Iwa-chan’s chakra supply is low enough that he’d barely be saved if reinforcements didn’t come on time. He’s breathing shallowly, and whatever that rogue nin had done, it had fucked him up bad. Tooru’s legs are crushed under boulders of rock, and he feels exhausted down to the threads of his bones. Hanamaki and Matsukawa’s hands are turning blue where they’re linked. 

There were once four, and now there are two. 

Tooru blinks away the blood dripping into his eyes, tilts his head towards the sky as the sun spills its warmth onto his skin, and he _breathes_ , the air rattling in his lungs like a caged animal.

ANBU don’t cry. They kill, quick and painless with a tanto or a kunai to the jugular vein, or slow and painstaking with days of unending torture and bones picked apart from the skeleton, broken and bent and out of shape. They swear vengeance and avenge the lost lives of those closest to their hearts. 

Hanamaki and Matsukawa die hand in hand, together like they’ve always wanted to be. Tooru wonders if it’s the light playing tricks, or if the two of them were smiling at each other in their last moments.

**02**

As captain, it’s Tooru who delivers the news of Hanamaki’s death to his mother. She was a kunoichi in her prime, one who served the village as an assassin for years before retiring to spend more time with her family. Tooru has known her since he befriended Hanamaki in the academy, when he was a sniffling little brat who cried too easily and she was barely settling into the role of being a stay at home mother. When Hanamaki got too rough with him, pulling at his hair while playing ninja and calling him Crybaby Tooru, she’d pat his head and tell him he should be braver if he wants Hanamaki to feel sorry for his actions. 

He never had parents of his own. It was Hanamaki-san who caught him when he collapsed at her front door after his first assassination order within his first week at ANBU. She made the four of them beef stew when they passed their chunin exams. It had been her haunted eyes that had begged him to reconsider when he told her he’d accept the position of Captain of the Phi team. She only had one son who shared her blood, but it always felt like her love extended towards the rest of them. For Matsukawa, who was the last living member of his clan, who never had a family and lived alone in a compound that was large enough for the ghosts of his past to live comfortably. For Iwa-chan, who had parents who never loved him or treated him like he was a person because he chose to be a shinobi over living their civilian life. For Tooru, who was an orphan in a broken system.

He lays Hanamaki’s tanto at her feet, and doesn’t remove his mask as he kneels.

“No,” she says. He can’t look up and meet her eyes, so he resolutely stares at the spot of red on the carpet at the entryway where he’d spilled cherry juice while jostling around with Iwa-chan the night before they’d left for the mission that had taken Hanamaki-san’s children. There’s a sharp intake of air, like it’s stuck in the branches between her lungs, like she wants to scream but can’t bring herself to. Her fingers close around the metal plate on his shoulders. “ _No_.”

“Before they died, they took down all the enemy operatives that engaged with them,” Tooru says, and he remembers, clear as day, the white light of the tanto in the darkness as it cut through leagues of enemy, Hanamaki’s fingers clenched around its hilt. The words burn in his throat, as if he’d swallowed gasoline and a match was left on his tongue. “Bluebird and Wolf are heroes, Hanamaki-san.”

_I’m sorry I let him die,_ he doesn’t say, though the words are right there, _if I was better, if I was faster, if I was smarter, if it were me who’d stood in the way of the enemy operative’s sword, if I’d been looking out for him the way I should have been, if I hadn’t been so weak, you’d still have your son and I’d still have my best friend. I’m sorry I failed him. I’m sorry that I failed you._

She cries like most shinobi do, choked sobs muffled against the harsh press of her palm against her lips, her shoulders shaking and her eyes clenched shut. He doesn’t look at her even as she kneels down and pulls him into her embrace, his masked face tucked into the crook of her neck and her fingers clutched into the black material under his armor. His arms remain steady at his sides. 

ANBU don’t cry. ANBU aren’t weak.

He feels like a murderer as she cries on his shoulder, and wishes he’d been the one lying dead under the canopy of leaves, all alone in place of the two people who deserve to live more than he did. 

**03**

Iwa-chan doesn’t cry when he finds out that he’d missed their funeral and never got to say goodbye. Instead, he finds Tooru as soon as he’s able to get away, hands him his part of the twin set of katana they’ve had since they were genin, and says, “We leave at dusk.”

Neither of them talk much as they disappear into the forest later that day, Tooru in his mask, the unbreakable Dove feared by the great five nations, and Iwa-chan in his, the feared Hound with a bounty larger than the village on his head. Underneath the masks, the wound of losing their best friends festers and decays, distress bubbling underneath their skin, anger clawing at their throats, the desire for vengeance burning in their blood as they inch closer and closer to where their enemy is stationed. Underneath the masks, they’re just Iwa-chan and Tooru, vulnerable and broken and lonely and _scared_ without Mattsun and Makki. 

There were once four pieces of the puzzle. Now, there are two, and the picture is incomplete.

Iwa-chan’s summon is right: the Stone-nin is exactly where she said he’d be, standing at the outpost with a senbon between his teeth, whistling a happy tune. Tooru remembers his face. He’d been immobilized by an earth jutsu, the dirt digging into him when he tried to move, his ribs crushed under the pressure, as he watched the bastard cut right through Hanamaki’s heart with a lightning jutsu. He was barely breathing, but he remembered that the killer was _smiling_ like he’d accomplished something.

He sees red when his katana digs into the operative’s chest. Blood speckles his mask from where the bastard’s chokes on his own filth, but he twists the blade, pulls it out, and strikes again. 

And again. 

And again.

And again.

And again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and _again_ , until there’s a gaping hole where the bastard’s heart was, like there had been a hole in Hanamaki’s chest when Matsukawa had used the last of his energy as his chakra reserves collapsed to hold onto his hand as they died _together_.

It’s the tears burning in his eyes that eventually start making him miss his mark, the katana hitting the empty space on the bloody dirt next to the bastard’s body. Even if Iwa-chan is only a few meters away, his own katana buried in the throat of the bastard who’d done what he’d done to Matsukawa, Tooru feels the loneliest he’s ever felt and the blood on his forearms burns like acid.

ANBU don’t cry. He tilts his head up, until the moonlight dances across his mask, and takes a staggering, halting breath, like he’s inhaling air for the first time since they died.

At daybreak, they’re back at the village. Iwa-chan removes his mask at the entrance and Tooru sees, for the first time, how sickly and tired he looks, how the gash on the side of his face isn’t completely healed. He doesn’t say anything about that night to Tooru, not really, but he shuffles closer to him in the HQ locker rooms until his face is tucked into the crook of Tooru’s neck, until his heart is beating in an irregular staccato a few centimeters or so below Tooru’s own, and very quietly, like he’s telling him a secret, he whispers, “I’m leaving the Corps. I can’t do this anymore.”

“I’m staying,” Tooru says, and his voice comes out strangled, like he’s about to cry but doesn’t know how to. Iwa-chan holds him closer at that, like he used to when they were genin and the landlord at Tooru’s building would make him cry after he did something wrong.

His arms remain steadily by his side, even as Iwa-chan’s fingers become impossibly tight around the material of his shirt, asking for a comfort Tooru didn’t deserve to give him.

**04**

In the event of an ANBU operative’s death, their loved ones, if they have any, are left a set of small objects and letters to remember them by.

Tooru has four letters, one for Hanamaki, one for Matsukawa, one for Hanamaki-san, and one for Iwa-chan. He also has a set of crescent shaped earrings he’d gotten from a mission in Kiri, impulsively bought for Matsukawa after he’d off-handedly mentioned that he might get a piercing during their rookie days. He leaves the book about chakra theory he’d borrowed from Hanamaki a few years ago, one he figured he’d return after his death, as one last comical joke. For Iwa-chan, he leaves his part of the katana.

He’d always thought he’d be the first to die among all of them. That they’d outlive him, live their lives to the fullest, and change the world like they’d always talked about doing when they were kids. He was wrong.

Along with the boxes left to him by Hanamaki and Matsukawa, he receives the things that he’d left for them too. The ANBU at the desk tells him that they have no particular use for it anymore, since they were dead. Then, in a bland tone of voice, he says, “I’m sorry for your loss,” and Tooru gives him an empty, blank look before moving to leave.

On the way out, he’s handed a solo S-Rank mission that he knows will push him to the brink of death and drag him closer to the end, and places the scroll on top of the boxes as he walks home.

Iwa-chan, just as he’d predicted, is outside Tooru’s door with his four boxes in his hands. The ANBU uniform, it's dark fabric and ivory armor, had always made Iwa-chan look tougher and stronger than he really was. In the regular jounin wear, flak jacket and bandages and all, he looks more like himself than he has in years.

“I didn’t want to open these alone,” he says. It’s been six months since they died, five since Iwa-chan left the ANBU, and it still doesn’t get easier to look at him in the eyes without thinking about all that he’d lost. 

He smiles, empty and blank, and lets Iwa-chan in without saying anything. 

People grieve differently. Hanamaki-san grieves by leaving flowers at the cemetery every Sunday and praying on every shooting star at night. Iwa-chan grieves by crying helplessly at the memorial whenever things got too rough and leaving the Corps because it reminded too much of them. Tooru grieves by leaving the village for months on end, strings of solo assassinations and S-Ranks and dead bodies in his trail, mindlessly working so he won’t have time on his hands to _think_.

His nightmares always begin with watching his best friends die, and he wakes up feeling like he’s the one whose heart had turned to mush at the mercy of a relentless strike of lightning.

When Iwa-chan sits at the table, he leaves two spaces by his left, precisely where Matsukawa and Hanamaki used to sit whenever they visited. Tooru mindlessly pulls out four cups instead of two, and boils enough water for four cups of tea.

“I’m worried about you,” Iwa-chan finally says. When Tooru looks at him, _really_ looks at him, he barely recognizes the face that’s looking back, and he realizes, with a start, that the number of times he’s been alone with Iwa-chan in these past six months can be counted on one hand. 

“I’ve just been busy.” Tooru says. Then, mechanically, the corner of his mouth curls up into a false impersonation of the cheery smile he always gives Iwa-chan, and adds, “You missed me, Iwa-chan?”

There’s the sound of porcelain cracking. Iwa-chan is gripping the cup so hard that it’s ruptured.

“Don’t do this, Oikawa.” He says, and maybe this wasn’t about not wanting to be alone at all. It’s beginning to look awfully a lot like he’d cornered Tooru here on purpose, and like an idiot, Tooru had let him have his way again. “I know you better than anyone. If you’re working yourself to the bone because you don’t want to think about _this_ ,” he makes a vague gesture at the boxes, “then you need to stop.”

_Ah, there he goes again,_ Tooru can almost hear Hanamaki say, _always a worrier, our dear old Iwaizumi-kun. He’ll have wrinkles before he’s thirty, won’t he, Oikawa?_

“I’m not running away from anything,” Tooru says. It’s hard not to get defensive, when Iwa-chan sees right through him anyway.

“Yes, you are.” Iwa-chan’s tone leaves no space for argument. “I heard you took three assassination missions at Kiri, back to back, without a team. Your neighbor told me that he hears you screaming at night. Yahaba told me you stopped visiting him. The last time I saw you was a month ago, and you couldn’t even look at me in the eyes long enough to say hello.”

_He’s got you there,_ a voice eerily similar to Matsukawa says. _You were never very good at hiding things from him, anyway._

“I’m fine.” The words taste like the lies he tells at psych evaluation every month.

Iwa-chan doesn’t say anything. For a while, the only sound in the room is the rickety ceiling fan as it completes one rotation after the other. 

“I know I’ve already lost Makki and Mattsun,” he says, and it’s like he’s struggling to get the words out. This time, when Tooru looks at him, his eyes are glued to the cup in his hand like he can’t bear to lock eyes with Tooru anymore, “but some days, it feels like I’ve lost you too.”

“Iwa-chan, _don’t_.” It comes out harsh, ragged and shuddering, and he feels like his heart is stagnant as the blood in it doubles in volume, inflating and expanding, pushing his lungs out until they’re curving against his rib cage.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye to them,” Iwa-chan says, like Tooru hadn’t said anything, and it feels like Tooru is burning up the more he talks. “And everytime you avoid me and leave the village, I keep thinking that you’re going to come back in a body bag or not come back at all.”

“I miss you,” he finally admits, and Tooru’s heart right about breaks into a million pieces, because for the first time, Iwa-chan meets his eyes, and he looks so much like Hajime from the academy who’d offered to share his friends with Tooru since he didn’t have any of his own. “Don’t drift too far, okay?”

It’s like that, as the sun disappears and darkness ascends, that the first sob tears its way out of his throat like a caged bird flying in free wind for the first time in years. He cries like most shinobi do, with his palm pressed against his lips to muffle the sounds and his eyes clenched shut, and for a moment, just for the barest moment, he forgets the dove mask watching him from the coat hanger, and cries _properly_ for the first time in six months.

Tooru raises his hands to clutch onto Iwa-chan’s shoulders when he pulls him into his embrace, and it’s warm, and it’s home, and he cries even more when he realizes that Iwa-chan’s crying too. He wishes that Mattsun and Makki were here, wishes he’d feel Mattsun’s hand in his hair, ruffling it and telling him that he was an ugly crier, wishes he’d feel Makki’s fingers pinching the side of his cheek and calling him a crybaby. 

They don’t open the boxes that day. An hour or two later is the first time Tooru rests well, Iwa-chan’s hand barely brushing his as they lay side by side in a dreamless sleep, the tea in their cups long gone cold. 

ANBU aren’t weak. They tear themselves apart, bit by bit, and then stitch themselves whole again.

**05**

Tooru lays the flowers at the memorial stone, the ones he knows made Makki’s nose itch and Mattsun wrinkle his nose in mild disgust.

“Hi, guys.” He smiles at their names, and beside him, Iwa-chan gives his shoulder a light, encouraging squeeze. “Sorry I haven’t been to visit. It’s been a rough couple of months without you assholes to remind me to get my head out of my own ass.”

Golden light from the sun spills onto the stone, lighting up their names like beacons. He runs his thumb over their names, and realizes, belatedly, that they’re written side by side.

Makki and Mattsun died hand in hand. 

_If they get lonely,_ Tooru thinks, and winds his own fingers around Iwa-chan’s, squeezing their interlocked hands tightly, _they’ll always have each other._

**END.**


End file.
